Monday, March 28, 2016

I visited my folks today. My dad was on Facebook and was most perturbed about an image he had seen on a group he's a member of. I showed him how to report it. This was the image:

This image, according to the report Dad got back, did not violate Facebook's "community standards".While I was helping dad, I scrolled further through the group where he saw that picture and found this image which I also reported:

This image is also perfectly fine according to Facebook's ruling.So blatant racism and sexism is awesome, yet an Aboriginal woman posting a feminist speech which is accompanied by a picture of women undertaking culture is not. Nor is it okay for a feminist woman to answer online abuse she has received (ping Clementine Ford).Just for everybody's interest...

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Last night I posted this message on my reinstated Facebook page. Sharing it here for the folks on Twitter as well as to put an update out on my blog to the previous statement:

Yes, I am officially back. My account has been reinstated by Facebook it has been confirmed, so I am not here due to admin error or system error or the like. I am free to post again and while Facebook is yet to catch up with the limitations of their "community standards", I at least know that it is on the agenda thanks to some truly spectacular online activism by you lot. Thank you again.

In addition, this page was deliberately targeted and maliciously attacked. I know there were some discussions of algorithms and shape analysis but that's not what happened. All up, four separate articles led to bannings over the weekend (rather than 4x the same article) so this wasn't about censored content but individual reporting. In addition, my Facebook account was reported as a fake which is why I had to verify it. To those still serving out bans because they reposted this content, I am really sorry you are in this situation. You have my full support and I know these bans are being tracked by the media so please contact via Twitter if you are affected.

I didn't want all this bullshit, and coming off the back of the week of IWD where I somehow managed to work, write two articles, deliver two keynotes and appear on the radio five times all while recovering from complications due to wisdom teeth extractions, this weekend, while a slightly amusing exercise in seeing how many ways I could exploit Facebook's community standards to keep the page up, was also incredibly frustrating and tiring. When it finally hit the mainstream media, it has added to the whole tiresome nature of this as interview demands have been endless and repetitive. In addition, it rapidly deteriorated into "Celeste shared a rude photo" which was never the case. A keynote address which I delivered which, for a number of reasons, had an incredibly appropriate photo attached to it via the process of republication was targeted by trolls. My only aim was to share my speech to those who, for some absurd reason and masochistic need to read 6000-odd words of my rants, wanted to access it.

The fact that image chosen by New Matilda to accompany it; two Aboriginal elders performing ceremony as a public thank you to unionists for their support during the NT Intervention (all topics covered in my speech); was flagged as material of a sexually explicit nature is despicable and offensive. These are women the same generation as my father and considering as a child he was flogged at school for even speaking lingo let alone engaging in ceremony, I know how damn hard it has been for desert mobs to not only hold on to culture, but to continue to practice it proudly in the face of ongoing colonisation. In addition, these women just flat-out deserve respect as elders and women with autonomy and integrity. The fact that they weren't afforded any of this by Facebook and indeed were just seen as an exploitable loophole by scurrilous types - I don't even have words to describe my anger at that. To those who saw the opportunity to use this to run a campaign of hate, please just get lost. You are not wanted on this page. Your type is exactly what is wrong with this country and this is not the space for you. Indeed, you deserve no space at all.

I do just finally want to acknowledge that as mentioned, this page grew well over a 1000 people in the days this was going on. Welcome to all the n00bs and thank you for pitching in with the signal boosting of this issue. Really appreciated, and I hope you enjoy this page!

I will be stepping back for a few days because as mentioned, it has been a fairly chaotic time, and I have to prioritise some things. So it will be a bit quiet around here for a bit. I promise to return to your regularly scheduled ranting again soon though. Thank you!

Monday, March 14, 2016

Yes, I have been banned again, this time for seven days. In addition, Facebook are now investigating my account and I was required to provide government-issued ID to verify that I am indeed a human. The reason I was banned this time was for sharing the Daily Mail coverage on this. Daily Mail, who have also shared this article on their Facebook page, have not been banned. Nor have the ABC who shared a similar article on their Facebook page.To recap, my first two bans were for sharing my keynote address, published by New Matilda. I was banned straight up the first time because due to previously posting the clip for 8MMM last year, Facebook have deemed me a repeat offender. I have additionally had another admin account on my Facebook page banned because it shared New Matilda coverage which was still deemed unacceptable despite the header image being pixelated. I am therefore deliberately being targeted. By both Facebook, and by malicious people on a campaign to disable my page.Facebook, at their end, have done nothing. I have sent numerous reports which have gone completely unacknowledged. I have sent emails which have hit dead ends. I have tried, through their systems to seek resolution. They have not acknowledged a single thing. Nor have they made any indication that they will address their systems to stop this happening. They have issued a response to New Matilda today which states as such. They are more than willing to not only allow ceremony to be censored, but also to allow a long time user to be targeted in such a way. At this stage, due to Facebook's complete lack of accessibility for recourse and review, my hands are completely tied.I gave a speech in good faith on International Women's Day, a day Facebook saw fit to acknowledge with a tacky little welcome image. My only crime has been to share that keynote when it has become available. Through their actions, they have additionally, as well as demeaned culture and women, demeaned my words and turned them into something they are not. My words, while an empowering rallying cry, were never meant to be used in this way. I resent the fact that Facebook, through their lack of cultural knowledge and respect for women, have turned them into this. They fail to provide a safe place for Aboriginal people and for women. Indeed, through the selective applying of their "community standards", they continually allow it to be an unsafe space. At this stage, this is all I have to say. EDIT: The petition is hereUpdate: 16/03/16 - I have posted a statement on Facebook regarding a change in the situation as of last night. I have republished that statement here. Additionally, the Facebook link to the Daily Mail page no longer exists. I can only assume this means they have also had this link removed. This really is not the answer, Facebook.

Saturday, March 12, 2016

This is the appeal I have sent to Facebook. Posting here for posterity:---------------------------------------------This is the second message I have sent. You have wrongfully blocked my account twice now. On both occasions, it has been because I have posted a transcript of a professional keynote I gave which had been reproduced on a news website. The banning you keep giving me is for "nudity" and the only reason I can see you are doing this is because the header image on my transcript, which was added by the editor of the news site and not myself, contains Aboriginal women painted up for traditional ceremonial dancing. I fully support the use of this image to accompany my keynote as it is incredibly fitting. Banning me for this reason (twice now) is racist and sexist, not to mention downright offensive. It shows a complete lack of respect for the oldest continuing culture in the world as well as the inability to educate oneself about these practices. It also shows that I have, in fact, been maliciously targeted and instead of penalising this malicious behaviour of people who would report me for this, you've targeted me.Here is the article which keeps getting me banned from Facebook due to your alleged "community standards". I suggest you actually have a look at it and educate yourselves. The sheer idea that women elders from the oldest living culture in the world are deemed "nudity" is so incredibly offensive, I don't know where to begin.https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/09/looking-past-white-australia-and-white-feminism/

Friday, March 11, 2016

By request, this is a copy of the keynote I delivered at the City of Darebin's Molly Hadfield Oration on the evening of the 10/3/16. Thanks to all who came, and I hope you enjoy the read!

Before I begin I would also like to acknowledge the
traditional owners of the lands on which we’re meeting tonight – the
Wurrundjeri people of the Kulin Nation – and pay my respects to their elders,
past and present, as well elders from other nations that may be present. I
emphasise that these lands were never ceded, and the negotiation of a proper
treaty between Original Peoples and the rest of Australia is overdue business.
I also introduce myself as an Arrernte woman, whose traditional lands extend
from Alice Springs covering vast regions of Central Australia. I have lived in
Melbourne now for 24 years, having been born in Canberra the daughter of an
Arrernte man and a Clifton Hill-born, Collingwood supporting woman, and I thank
the Wurrundjeri for allowing me to share in these stunning lands for so long.

I wonder if, before I launch into the full purpose of
my address tonight, the audience might indulge me for just a few minutes. When
I was contacted by the City of Darebin asking if I would give the Molly
Hadfield Social Justice Oration this year I was particularly pleased. I am, in
fact, a long-term resident of Darebin and this area is incredibly special to
me. I have, indeed, spent time living in Northcote, then Thornbury, then I
moved out to Reservoir, then finally, I moved to Preston. So I feel like I’ve
covered a fair chunk of Darebin and I have utterly no plans of moving anywhere
else. In Melbourne, the suburbs making up Darebin are the only places I have
truly felt at home.

I first moved over this way to attend university. I
was 18 years old and when my family had moved from Canberra to Melbourne 5
years prior, we had settled in the outer south eastern beachside suburb of
Chelsea. I loathed it out that way. I don’t mean to bag out an entire area
where people make their homes, but for me, it was a suffocating environment.
For starters, I’m not much of a swimmer and even if I were, the beach is a bay
beach with little personality, so I rarely went there except to have the odd
high school night of debauchery. But it was also so far from the city, and that
Frankston line train just seemed to take forever. I think the most telling part
though was that for all I had heard about the multicultural nature of Melbourne
growing up, the south eastern beachside areas are an area which this cultural
phenomenon has never really touched.

Sure, there were people of other cultural backgrounds
at my school, but the majority of the students were overwhelmingly working
class white Australian people. I was the only identifying Aboriginal student in
the school for most of my time there. I was not actually the only Aboriginal
student there, just the only one who did not hide it. The only time this wasn’t
the case was for a brief period in year 8 where there were suddenly three of us
in the one form room. The message I got from this was that Aboriginality was
something to be ashamed of, to be hidden, and as there was no way I could just
pretend to be a white Australian with a great tan, I did get targeted due to
both race and gender on a regular basis.

So part of my reasoning for applying to La Trobe
University, apart from knowing that at that stage (mid-90s), it was a highly
progressive institution with a number of cutting edge academics working at it,
was that I wanted to get the hell out of the South Eastern beachside. I also
wanted to leave home, and therefore applied to live in Chisholm College. I
think that year, I was one of only 19 Aboriginal students across the entire
state to go straight from high school to University, though I could be
mistaken. Anyway, on moving into Chisholm College and not receiving Abstudy
allowance, I had to get a job to support myself pretty quickly. Three weeks in,
I was successful at picking up work at Baker’s Delight in Northland.

I cannot tell you what it is like to go from a
monocultural area like the beachside suburbs where the only other Aboriginal
faces you are likely to see are members of your family to then suddenly start
working at Northland. I nearly fell over the bread counter with excitement the
first time a local aunty came up to order bread from me, and then followed that
up nearly ten more times during my first shift. It was literally, the first
time in Melbourne, I had ever run into another Aboriginal person undertaking
the incredibly menial task of grocery shopping. This is not to say that there
are no Aboriginal people in the area I grew up, but rather the contrast between
that area and working in the local government area with one of the highest
Indigenous populations in the state was marked. It went beyond that though:
we’d have elderly women come up and order bread completely in Italian, I got
used to seeing hijabi women regularly, I was overwhelmed with the cultural
diversity of food thanks to the many ethnic groups represented in this area. It
was nearly impossible to get a bad feed anywhere even if paying peanuts. To me,
this area was, and still very much is, precisely the place they’re describing
when they refer to “multicultural Melbourne” and I feel very fortunate to see
this multiculturalism playing out constantly: in the festivals we have here, in
the services available branded in every script imaginable, in the 1:30pm
Saturday scrum at the Preston Market.

There’s one other huge part of this puzzle though,
regarding my love affair with Darebin that I feel is absolutely integral for
setting the scene of this oration: the City of Darebin is an extraordinarily
significant site when it comes to the continuing activities of the Indigenous
rights’ movement. Indeed, when it comes to Melbourne, I am hard pressed to come
up with another area where there are as many reflections of this movement. I
think most people here are so used to them being a part of the Darebin
landscape, they don’t always notice these things. Yet I went from just hearing
about the long fight to maintain Northland Secondary College – a school which
was then noted for its Indigenous-inclusive approach to both education and
community engagement, as well as having a high proportion of Aboriginal
students - back in the early 1990s under Jeff Kennett’s reign when I myself was
still in high school, to working nextdoor to this very site of struggle.

Each morning on the way into work, my tram passes the
Aboriginal Advancement League. Thousands of Darebinites probably pass this
exact same site every day yet beyond the incredibly recognisable mural, they
may not know what the importance of it is. For those who don’t know, the League
is the oldest Indigenous organisation in the country. It drew from two existing
organisations in its formation. The first was the Australian Aborigines League which
had been formed in 1934 by Yorta Yorta man William Cooper, along with Margaret
Tucker, Shadrach James and others – most of whom had left missions; forcibly or
otherwise; and moved into the city. The Australian Aborigines League engaged in
many actions, such as getting a petition together for King George V demanding the
equal treatment of Aboriginal people on a number of fronts, joining with the
Aborigines Progressive Association in Sydney to stage the 1938 Day of Mourning
during the 150 year celebrations of Australia, and marching with a delegation
to the German consulate to deliver a petition against the "cruel persecution of the
Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany” following the Kristallnacht
pogrom. For this last act, William Cooper has been much recognised by the
Jewish community both here and overseas and he has been commemorated both in
the Holocaust museum and the Forest of Martyrs for his leading the only private
protest which happened in the wake of Kristallnacht. I just wish to add to this
that Margaret Tucker is also a reasonably well-known name around here and
through years of activism, she went on to form the United Council of Aboriginal
and Islander Women as well as sit on the Aboriginal Welfare Board. She was
awarded an Order of the British Empire in 1968 for recognition of her service
to Aboriginal people. She wrote an autobiography called “If Anybody Cared” and
a hostel in Fairfield for teenage Aboriginal girls is named after her.

The other organisation involved in the formation of
the eventual Aboriginal Advancement League was the “Save the Aborigines
Committee”. This committee had formed following an enquiry into the living
conditions on two Aboriginal missions commissioned by the Victorian Government:
Lake Tyers out in East Gippsland and Framlingham out near Portland. The
recommendations of the enquiry was that Aboriginal people of mixed heritage be removed
from the missions and assimilated. Naturally, there was strong objection to the
proposed forcible removal of people and splitting up of families, and the Lake
Tyers community set up the Save the Aborigines Committee to fight this and
resist all attempts to close their community. The Aborigines Advancement League
therefore was formed out of this resistance and the existing Australian
Aborigines League which had been reinvigorated post-World War 2 by Pastor Doug
Nicholls along with Bill Onus – a man who, among other things, was responsible
for telling the City of Melbourne that “Moomba” means “celebration by the
river” when it really doesn’t… He was an Indigenous trade unionist after all ;)

So right here within the boundaries of Darebin, we
have an incredibly significant site of resistance, of self-determination and of
Survival. In my lifetime it has also been where I went to vote for the ATSIC
elections, where my work team was presented with a Wurrecker Award for our work
supporting Indigenous students at the Victorian College of the Arts, where I
watched the National Apology delivered by Kevin Rudd (though I should note, we
turned the sound down during the response by Brendan Nelson because it was so
terribly offensive). The League is where I attended the funeral of dear friend
and unbeknownst mentor Lisa Bellear, one of the most important grass roots
activists, poets and community photographers in Melbourne in recent times who
is still sorely missed to this day. It’s where I attended the opening ceremony
of the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference of Education and saw performances
from Indigenous groups from around the world all in this one space. In short,
it’s been a pretty important place in my life as well.

Darebin is a potent area for Indigenous activity. We
can see this all around us. Services such as the Yappera Children’s Centre, the
Aboriginal Legal Service, Victorian Aboriginal Education Association
Incorporated, 3 Kool ‘n’ Deadly radio, the Family Counselling Service – all of
these and more are a part of Darebin. They have mainly come about due to
Aboriginal community activism and to cater for our unique circumstances as
Original peoples, and they show a vibrant and engaged local community. Due to
all this, I am proud to be a part of the Aboriginal community in Darebin, and I
am proud that we additionally live in one of the most culturally potent and
diverse parts of Melbourne. I firmly believe that when people talk about
“multicultural Melbourne”, they are in fact talking about Darebin and a few of
our neighbours because as someone who grew up elsewhere in this city, I don’t
believe I am being harsh in stating that the melting pot we take for granted
here is not a universal Melbourne experience. Anyway, I’ve digressed long
enough, but through this I hoped to show how living in this area has very much
fuelled my work.

Nearly four years ago, I started my blog “Rantings of
an Aboriginal Feminist”. I had just finished a Graduate Diploma at the University
of Melbourne, and I found my brain fuelled and wanting to engage more with all
the ideas I had accumulated undertaking a vast variety of political science
subjects. I have been an identifying Indigenous feminist for about ever as in
my world, it was impossible to separate the issues I face as an Indigenous
person from the issues I face as a woman in a society which continually
centralises the experiences of white, middle class men. Due to the fact, the
two movements have always ran parallel in my world. I was also always going to
be a unionist because I came from enough of a working class background that I
knew the protections we take for granted in this country – weekends, sick
leave, annual leave, 8 hour days – are actually all rights that were hard
fought for, and as rights, they are always in danger of being taken away unless
we continue fighting for them. Think for example what is happening right now
with regards to the threat on penalty rates. Penalty rates were negotiated as a
compensation for people giving up time which is otherwise recognised as
personal or family time in order to keep our world ticking over. Penalty rates
have, in particular, been integral in supporting people like university
students who are working their way through courses and who do not have access
to most fulltime employment opportunities while gaining their qualifications.
That this compensation is continually argued as a “privilege” rather than a
right, and seems to be used as a political football rather that being seen as a
great hallmark of a fair and equitable society is, I think, telling with
regards to how precarious our rights can be and how expendable workers are seen
as being.

When I started my blog; buoyed following encouragement
from a couple of older Aboriginal women; I was pretty convinced that no one
would read it – some other Aboriginal women if I was lucky, but I had no
expectations. That a Fairfax editor read it six weeks after I started it and
wanted to publish one of my pieces on Daily Life leading to this ongoing career
as one of the busiest freelance Aboriginal Feminist Unionists ever was
unexpected. You see, my whole idea what that starting a blog was about me
providing an “anti-media” space. The likes of me; an avowed hard left
Aboriginal feminist; was not a voice seen in the mainstream media which
continues to be dominated by white, financially-privileged men. Yet here I am,
now a columnist for Daily Life and now bringing those exact same political
standpoints to a mainstream audience who, for better or worse, read them. It’s
meant that certain ideas which I know are the ideas of a marginalised community
and indeed, a specific group within that marginalised community, are more and
more making their way out there into the minds of the rest of Australia. And
that truly is a change from recent times where the only Indigenous voices we
would see within the mainstream media were the voices of Aboriginal people who
best reflected the ideologies of the status quo: generally conservative
Aboriginal men. Diversity has, for a couple of decades now, pretty much been
another word for assimilation – we will have the different backgrounds, faces
and experiences as long as they don’t rock the boat too much.

I still blame John Howard for this, because his
continual branding of the Indigenous experience and history as “black armband”
views meant that our realities were continually framed as mistruths designed to
make people feel bad about this country, rather than being integral to
understanding this place and how it comes to be in the position which it is
right now. Not that long ago, I was at the big protest against Reclaim
Australia and the United Patriots’ Front and their inherent racism. One of the
Reclaim lads was almost crying out there on the line because, in his very
articulate reckoning, “Vegemite is now f**ken Halal-certified”. I think he
actually believed that this was an indication Islam was taking over the country.
When I informed him that Vegemite has been broadly owned by an American company
for several years, he became a bit confused. He became even more confused when
he started talking about how we need to reclaim Australia back from these
hordes and I asked him whether he had ever heard of the Mabo ruling and the
false doctrine of terra nullius and what it was he thought he could reclaim?

Which leads me to the notion of “unfinished business”.
One of my earliest recollections of political activism growing up in Canberra;
apart from the fact that we had that great big white building they were
constructing up on a hill; were the land rights protests. My childhood is
dotted with memories of the Tent Embassy – a protest site which only a couple
of years ago celebrated its 40th birthday – as well as marches
during the bicentennial year. The current parliament house was opened in May of
1988 and this day saw one of the largest convergences of Aboriginal protesters
arguing against the celebration of the Bicentenary and calling for Land Rights.
Indeed, it marked a day where my parents were more than happy for us kids to
join in the chants of “land rights now! Bicentennial bullshit” and felt proud
we were out there swearing with so many other Aboriginal people.

Alongside these marches though was the actual
Indigenous community which had sprung up in Canberra as a result of the
establishment of governmental departments such as ATSIC. The 70s and 80s saw an
influx of Aboriginal people from all over the country, including many of my own
relations from the desert regions. I therefore have many memories of being over
at Uncle Charlie Perkins’s place – a place infamous because it had a flag pole
with a Aboriginal flag right out the front – swimming in the pool while a bunch
of always seemingly angry black men discussing the issues around a table. If it
was not Uncle Charlie’s place, it seemed to be Uncle Kwementyaye Randall (and I’ve
used Kwementyaye because he passed away just last year) where the guitar would
be out and if it wasn’t Charley Pride or Bob Dylan, then Uncle would be singing
the song which made him famous and became an anthem for the Stolen Generations
“brown skin baby”.

Yet where were the women in amongst this mix? I think
one of the things I would continually see back then was that while the women in
these circles; black and white; were strong and opinionated women not afraid of
a good discussion, they were expected to be the “backbone” of the movement. Women
were expected to support men, to nurture both men and children, but not
necessarily to lead anything. And I’d see it play out even in those Canberran
suburban environments: the intersection between Aboriginality and gender
provided the limited promotion of some while pushing others back.

It’s no surprise to me that while Aboriginal women are
community organisers and agitators of incredible skill, on numerous occasions
their views are seen as secondary and marginal. I’ve already mentioned Margaret
Tucker and her activism around Aboriginal girls and women. Not that long ago,
Black Panther Woman – a documentary about Marlene Cummins – came out speaking
of the sorts of abuses she and other Aboriginal women experienced within the
Australian Black Panther movement during the early 1970s. There is one scene in
particular which has continued to stick in my head ever since I first saw the
film nearly two years ago. It’s a piece of archival footage in which a group of
Aboriginal women are having an argument with white feminists who are trying to
engage the Black Panther women in their struggle. In one part Aunty Isobel Coe,
I believe, points out to the feminists that splitting the Indigenous rights
movement was not an option on the basis of gender because there was a need to
walk together, and while women had experienced issues within this movement, the
feminist movement was not a safe space either because it erased Aboriginal
experience. Another Aboriginal woman in the group said that she believed that
the place of Aboriginal women was behind their men, supporting them. Yet while
women are supporting men and children and community, who ends up looking out
for the women?

Last year, feminists across this country borrowed from
a feminist campaign set up in the UK and as a way of drawing attention to the
women victims of violence, they started “Counting Dead Women”. I watched these
counts intensely, and in particular, there were two counts I was keeping an eye
on. The first was from an online lobby group set up in the wake of offensive
comments shock jock Alan Jones had made in reference to then Prime Minister
Julia Gillard about how women “destroy the joint”. They took their name
“Destroy the Joint” from these comments and their “Counting Dead Women” tally
included all women who were victims of violence against women. This means that
as well as counting women murdered by men, they also included women murdered by
other women arguing that this was a form of lateral violence (or “sideways
violence” where you attack your competing peers rather than your oppressors)
which in itself is a product of the patriarchy. The second count I was watching
was conducted by radical feminist collective “Real for Women”. Their tally was
entitled “Man Murders Woman 2015” and as the name suggests, it focussed on
female victims of male violence only, in line with the original tally from the
UK. By the end of the year, the Destroy the Joint count sat on 79, while the
Real for Women count sat on 71. I’m hoping that in 2016, we don’t see similar
levels of carnage.

Yet early on, while watching these counts, a pattern I
could not ignore emerged. Aboriginal women were representing in high numbers in
the statistics. Indeed, I identified that the numbers of Aboriginal women
reached by April represented what a parity rate would be if the list continued
to grow at the same rate for the rest of the year with no more Indigenous
additions. Of course, the lists did continue to grow, and by the end of the
year, Aboriginal women were making up over a fifth of them, or 7 times
population parity. We are roughly three percent of the women in this country
yet we were 21% of the Destroy the Joint tally. I repeat: 3% were making up
21%. And while Real for Women most certainly took an interest in these numbers
I was drawing out of their figures, for most others, this went unnoticed
because the broader program of highlighting the full issue was of more urgency.
Yet I couldn’t pass it over. While it might not have been as apparent to other
women reading these lists, to me it was glaring. I knew what to look for. In
the reports, if it wasn’t an area well-populated by Aboriginal people, I was
looking for those who weren’t named while also mentioning a member of the
family being taken in for questioning. Sometimes it was the nature of the crime
itself. In any case, most times these reports jumped out at me and I recorded
them on my blog.

Time and time again, we see these inflated statistics
when it comes to Aboriginal women and if we are not highlighting them and
drawing attention to them, it continues the thought that Aboriginal women are
expendable. In Australia, women are already considered secondary. We are always
cast in the supporting role while the lives of white men are centralised. We
don’t see women’s sport on TV, we consider the opinions of women to be marginal
and biased whereas white men are cast as expert and objective (and strangely,
this seems to include the likes of Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and other such
commentators who have made a living off taking controversial stances). A gender
pay gap still exists and a reasonable portion of this is because work seen as
“women’s work” is continuously undervalued even when it requires similar
amounts of education and qualification in order to be eligible to enter the
field. We still have to raise awareness of domestic violence because it is
still seen as a “private” issue and the idea that it is statistically safer for
a woman to walk the streets by herself at night with headphones on than it is
to be at home is yet to permeate mainstream thought. Women are
under-represented in leadership, in politics and in so many other areas. So if
women are seen as secondary, imagine how a woman who is from a
racially-marginalised background is seen.

This is reflected so often in the way that we talk
about issues effecting Aboriginal women. Victim blame is frequent and analysis
of structural oppression goes out the window. It’s easier to point the finger
at alcohol consumption, poverty, drugs, remoteness and lack of education than
admit that all these things are symptoms rather than root causes. If we
successfully eradicated all of these things tomorrow, the rates at which
Aboriginal women experience violence would not disappear, indeed it may just
simply decrease slightly because we have not, as a society, dealt with gendered
or race-based oppression openly and thoroughly. As it stands right now, Aboriginal
women are 38 times more likely to be hospitalised due to domestic and family
violence than other women in this country. We are 3 times more likely to be
victims of sexual violence. We are 70 times more likely to receive an acquired
brain injury requiring hospitalisation due to domestic violence. Always, the
policy and media responses to these things seem to focus around heavy-handed
approaches: removing things from the community like the ability to purchase
alcohol, the right to spend one’s money as they please, the micro-management of
lives, while at the same time, they defund shelters, women’s groups, legal
services and health services. They remove the very things which enable women to
seek assistance, become independent and pursue justice. As I said last year
when talking at the “Putting Gender on the Agenda” conference in Alice Springs,
the last thing Aboriginal women need is to be further structurally
disempowered.

But that’s not all. According to Sisters Inside,
incarceration rates for Aboriginal Women have grown 86% in the past decade, yet
for non-Indigenous men, it’s only grown 3%. In Victoria, while making up 0.7%
of the overall population, Aboriginal people make up 7.7 per cent of the prison
population with the incarceration rates of Aboriginal women the fastest growing.
I’ve always found living in Victoria and coming from a Northern Territory
background an interesting mix. People are always quick to tell me how racist
Alice Springs is, and the Northern Territory in general, because they’ve seen
the news reports, they’ve heard about the crimes and displacements, or they’ve
visited there and seen blatant racism play out right in front of their eyes as
a part of an ordinary day. Yet while that blatant racism is confronting, it’s
the systemic racism – the racism which is a part of our governance, our policy,
our culture – which is harder to confront yet plays such a big part in the
situation in Victoria. There seems to be an assumption in Victoria that because
people are living in more strongly colonised areas with more urban lifestyles,
everything is okay. Yet the statistics state otherwise. Last year, when it was
reported that Aboriginal women are 11 times more likely to die at the hands of
their partner in Victoria, it was additionally reported by Aboriginal Housing
Victoria that where Aboriginal women are victims of domestic violence, they are
significantly less likely to report it to the authorities. A huge part of this
is that while the Stolen Generations are thought to be a horrific historical
blemish for which there has since been a national apology, Aboriginal children
are currently being taken away from their families at rates higher than they
were back then. In addition, if women do seek assistance, some fear retribution
from families due to the intricate networks of connection here. One story I
heard was of a woman who tried to seek assistance and incarceration was offered
to her because apparently being in jail is a safe alternative. As if our women
need to be jailed more.

I do, though, wish to acknowledge some of the amazing
work that happens in Victoria with regards to the rights of Aboriginal women. TheAboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service, for example, has been
continuously working to highlight these issues and support the community. They
also run a programme called “Sisters Day Out” which is a one day workshop
geared around empowering and building resilience in Aboriginal women. If anyone
has some spare change, I’d urge them to consider donating to this programme as
it needs funds to continue. I also do want to acknowledge the amount of younger
women activists I have seen around the traps leading the charge for change. I
don’t know how many people are aware of this, but when it came to the
incredibly successful rallies held in Melbourne last year against the proposed
forced closures of Aboriginal communities, the majority of the people who
organised these were Aboriginal activists under the age of 30; a significant
proportion of which were women. They led the charge, gave the speeches, dealt
with the hostile media and were successful in rallying thousands of people for
Aboriginal rights. Some of the work our younger women are doing right now is
inspiring, and it has been an absolute pleasure doing what I can through the
media to assist in drawing attention to this.

Which leads me to my final point for this evening. Of
the many things I have written about over my unionist, freelancing, blogging
and columnist career, it’s consistently been the articles I have written around
the topic of the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in
the Australian Constitution which has drawn the most enquiry. Only a few weeks
ago, the Victorian State Government held a public forum for Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people around the topics of self-determination and
constitutional recognition. This meeting was historic for a couple of reasons.
The first reason being that it was the first such forum the state government
had held in over 20 years and it was attended by about 500 community members
throughout the day. The community members present were from all across the
state, along with interstate mobs who have made Victoria their home over the
years. Elders all the way to young people were present. The second reason this
meeting was historic was because a motion was passed unanimously rejecting constitutional
recognition. An additional two motions were passed, each recording one
dissenting vote. The first called upon the government to investigate and
resource a treaty process and the second called upon a council of elders to be
established.

I wasn’t there on the day as while I have made
Melbourne my home now for 24 years, as an Arrernte woman I wanted to stand back
and let the Vic mobs say their piece as the peoples of here. I was, though,
watching the livestream of this event and when I saw that they had rejected
constitutional recognition outright as sovereign peoples, I don’t think I have
ever been prouder to live in this state with such a staunch community. To
provide a little bit of background for those who don’t know: the articles I
have written have mainly been on dissenting Indigenous views on the Federal
Government’s proposal to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
in the Constitution. I have felt it has been incredibly important to write on
this as not only have the government funded the Recognise campaign in order to
educate the broader public on this proposed referendum for recognition, but
they and the media have continuously stated that this is what Indigenous people
want; that it’s time; that it’s the right thing to do. Conversely, the main
oppositional opinions represented within the media have been from conservative
white male commentators and their ploy has been to paint any recognition of
Indigenous people as “racist” because it apparently separates us as a nation.
To be frank, I haven’t much cared to hear their arguments, and as someone who
also holds oppositional views but from an Indigenous perspective, and someone
who knows several other Aboriginal people who also hold oppositional views, I
felt it was inherently more important to try and raise public awareness of the
actual debates that we are having within the Indigenous community on this
topic. This is a proposed referendum about us and our rights and therefore our
views should be centralised and not the views of those who are really not going
to be affected at all either way.

When it comes to the call for a treaty, this is
nothing new. Indeed, Australia is the only commonwealth country which does not
have a treaty with the Indigenous peoples. Back in 1988, the then Prime
Minister Bob Hawke promised that there would be a treaty following the
government receiving the Barunga statement. This promise was reneged upon due
to both non-Indigenous lobby group pressure, and internal Labor Party politics,
as Hawke himself recently outlined. Yet just a few years after this, in 1992,
the Mabo ruling was handed down from the High Court of Australia. One of the key points of interest of this
ruling was the rejection of the doctrine of Terra
Nullius – land belonging to no one – which was what was deemed when Captain
Cook landed here, and was the very notion under which this land was settled or
invaded (depending on how you view it). This meant that the idea that
Indigenous people had no concept of land ownership or belonging was inherently
false.

This was not news to Indigenous people though it
itself caused panic over a potential constitutional crisis for if Terra Nullius
was a legal fiction then what happens to a constitution which was drafted under
that very basis? Yet the notion of Indigenous sovereignty and land rights is
yet to be reconciled in this country and it won’t go away until it is. For how
much of this ignoring of our past as a country factors into the psyche of
people today? How does this continued social ignorance permeate the very
structures which exclude, which discriminate and which disenfranchise thus
contributing to the sorts of statistics I have highlighted here tonight? How
can this truly be the “lucky country” for all when we cannot own our own history
and grow from it in unity?

I am often asked what I think a treaty would entail,
and like a good trade unionist I tend to reply “the coming together as equals
around a table to bargain for a fair outcome”. I feel it has the opportunity to
ensure that the most basic of services like housing, water, food, health care
and education are no longer things which are treated as rewards for compliance
in some of our most disadvantaged Indigenous communities in this country. These
are basic human rights and equal access should be a given. I feel that the
notion of land rights would be discussed in this context, with recognition and
reparation part of the deal. Speaking of reparation, I would like to see this
for the Stolen Generations and also for the Stolen Wages (or the many
generations of Aboriginal people who undertook forced labour while their wages
were held in a trust never to be seen by the workers). Most of all though, it
would contain the right to self-determination: for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people to have the right to make their own decisions about their lives
and their communities and have the governmental support to do so rather than
continually just being victims of imposed governmental policy set up to fail. A
treaty would contain obligations the government would need to adhere to and
therefore provide a blueprint for a fairer country into the future.

And at the end of the day, that’s what I want. I believe
that we can do so much better when it comes to the rights of Indigenous peoples
in this country, and I wholeheartedly believe it is for the betterment of
everyone living here today if we do. For without this, we are continuing to
live on a legacy which lacks truth, understanding and equality. We perpetuate
this, generation after generation and then wonder why the disparities remain;
why cycles continue; why we still need to protest. More than anything though,
through my years out there protesting on the streets and seeing the numbers
expand as more and more people from all walks of life take a stand for what’s
right, I know we can do this. For there are many compassionate people in this
country who want a fairer future too and are willing to walk alongside us to
make that happen. And this truly is a wonderful thing which our country should
be proud of. Thank you.

About Me

Arrernte, feminist, hard left, trade unionist, with a taste for protopunk.
.
Commentators: if you're using "Anonymous" to place a comment, please at least sign it off with a name or handle. I don't want "Anonymous" comments all over my blog because it gives me no one to respond to!
Like my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/blackfeministranter